


Perennial

by gogollescent



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 16:26:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the apocalypse, Juri investigates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perennial

To begin with, Juri was as determined as anyone to understand what had happened, even though she knew that Ohtori ran on the fuel of mass befuddlement and that ambiguity revved the chairman’s engine like nothing but the bare feet of young girls. She still believed herself to be an exception to a rule remotely felt. She had been among the elite, able to protect herself from sudden blindness even when it concerned Shiori—at least, she thought she had seen how things could be. But then Utena vanished, and everything went on.

“I don’t believe it,” said Nanami, who was buffing her nails on the schoolgirl’s blouse she now habitually wore. There were times when Juri missed the yellow suit. It was distracting to see Nanami dressed like a person, light hair curling, not against a banana backdrop, but on a field of white cotton. The uniform shirt disguised her figure so that only the shadow of her waist showed through cloth. It must have been a year old, and like other old shells it had thinned to a point of sharp translucency. 

“You think the world ended, and we just didn’t notice?”

“ _No_ ,” said Nanami, with an irritated glance at Juri’s shoes, as though it was the wingtips that had spoken and not Juri. “I don’t believe she’s gone.”

“No one’s seen her in weeks,” said Juri. (She was wrong; it had been three days. Too long, already, for her memory.)

“Oh, please,” said Nanami. “Do you want to know what I think? I think the chairman and Anthy have her locked up somewhere. Up in the tower, or even in the arena. Wouldn’t that be just like them? To keep her away, all to themselves, and do ungodly things to her.”

“All to themselves,” repeated Juri doubtfully, remembering the advice Nanami had given Utena on the badminton court. Keep away. Utena’s smile had been chastened and sweet,  _too late_  written in red across her mouth. If any of them had known what was coming, it had been Utena in the court, with the sunlight full on her rosy head and unselfconscious valor—the calm of resolve had seemed to stretch her out as heat does glass, and made her aim, with the racquet at least, impeccable. She’d been willing. Juri wondered when, before Utena, anyone at Ohtori had done a thing willingly, rather than out of miserable need.

“It’s just an expression,” said Nanami. “It’s not that I want to see her around. But you’re kidding yourself, if you think they’d let her go.”

Juri turned her head to one side, thinking.

“Or maybe I’m wrong,” said Nanami. “Maybe she blew away on the wind. Maybe she exploded like a flower does when it's stabbed. Maybe she hitchhiked to high school.”

“Dueling didn’t teach us much botany, did it?” said Juri. She smiled. “Thank you, Nanami.”

“Don’t,” said Nanami, looking furious. “You and your stupid story! I wish that boy had never drowned. People should be alive and forgettable, not dead and forgotten.”

Which was what made Juri seek out Anthy, when it came down to it.

She found her in the rose garden, holding out a watering can like a sword. “Miss Arisugawa,” said Anthy, and she sounded surprised. But not because she’d been absorbed in the flowers—in fact, Juri got the distinct impression that she had been drizzling water on the same bush for some time. Its pallid blooms were sodden and water welled in droplets out of the earth around the roots. There was nothing else in the greenhouse to indicate that its caretaker had fallen into neglectful habits, but still Juri felt a chill, like someone observing the removal of every loved artifact from a dead woman’s home, and piling them all on the lawn. So much beauty had become little more than the debris of loss. Yet it was impossible not to be glad. Perhaps that was the revolution Utena had brought about; now, for the first time in all their lives, it was possible to view another’s grief and feel merely sorry. To feel fortunate, as though one’s sins were small. 

“Himemiya,” said Juri, “I came because—”

Anthy met her eyes. There was a great deal that was different about her, Juri saw, but the strangest part was that she had taken off her glasses. Locking gazes with an unbespectacled Anthy was as much as to suddenly find yourself at the bottom of a dim green lake, where the only living things were you and the leeches: and soon it would be the leeches alone. Juri shook her head. “Anthy,” she said, and stopped, feeling her mind adrift.

Anthy reached up and straightened her beret. “Is it about Utena?” she asked. Juri didn’t hear her for a long moment, and then she said, “Who's that?”

Something taken. Or let go.

Anthy put the can in Juri’s unresisting hand. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “She’s no one you know.” 


End file.
